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I think both are fucking beautiful and have been pillars of culture, since like, forever. I think the relationship between the two culturally has been strained because of Douchey Sport's fans and Pretentious Art kids –– the two fundamental groups (over-generalization and mostly a joke). I've been inviting both over to my house on the same night to watch an NBA game immediately followed by a Wong Kar-Wai movie. I'm fighting this battle on the front lines.
Jan 24, 2024
Related Recs
Something I've been noticing a lot in any sort if discourse on art and pop culture is a shift from seeing things as art to seeing them as simply media. This essentially combines all art forms while also including other "consumable" forms of expression such as news. While this is useful to talk about their similarities (a recent post here talked about collecting physical media such as CDs or DVDs), it seems to me like it degrades art of its value. Maybe this is the result of a history of debates about what's "real" art and what's just dumb entertainment, or maybe the roots of this lay in our increasing focus on constant consumption. I think the grouping of information and art (entertainment?) is sad enough as is, but it also creates a strange link between art forms that have little in common.
Am I just misunderstanding a term here? Who knows. Here's a sun bear I named Media
Mar 10, 2025
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There's a thing that I notice at art museums sometimes. Someone wearing a slightly annoyed expression will be speeding through the exhibit like they are going down a long to do list. Or I'll be playing a board game with a group and there will be some guy with a strained face looking like they'd rather be anywhere else. Maybe another time we're leaving a movie and they start to complain about how it 'wasn't realistic', you get the picture.
I swear to God it makes me want to pulpify their face.
I'm not saying that you need to like every piece of art or that you should feel bad for not liking a movie, but, goddamn, at least give it a fucking second. Closing yourself off to The New, being automatically opposed to earnestness when it appears, is one of the most damaging defense mechanisms I can think of. It is, in turn, also one of the best ways to maximize your misery.
The defense mechanism that is cynicism, turns its users into parasites of the Social; they are sold the idea (a lie) that damaging and denigrating <<something>> allows one to become independent of its power structure. On the contrary, just as a leech is the most dependent on its host, cynics are those that are most dependent on the power structures in our culture.
I really want to emphasize the difference between criticism and cynicism, because I am in no way saying that we should not criticize bad or damaging art, but to successfully criticize something means to first buy in, to really allow yourself to be taken by a piece, to examine it as it comes. Buying in as a term (even one so bathed in capitalist sebum) is the right one in this case because to buy in requires one to make a sacrifice. You cannot experience art without opening yourself to the possibility that it will do damage to you. To fully allow yourself to be moved by a piece of art is to allow yourself to be cut.
But inside that cut is what it means to be human.
I think the single best way to combat cynicism is an unceasing curiosity of the world and the people in it. The normal and common of this world is absolutely fantasmatic if you take a moment to examine it; we see the world through have fluid filled orbs made of meat for fucks sake. The fact that there is anything at all, the fact that you and I exist for even a second is an absolutely unbelievable mind fuck, and to be unimpressed by any and everything doesn’t make you special or better than anyone, it just leaves you on a road to the pit of despair and leaves me really bummed out for the rest of the night.
Sep 20, 2024
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1. Music: still got it after all these years
2. Film: the movies are back, baby
3. Literature: contemporary lit is completely washed but you have like 200 years of novels to catch up on.
4. Visual arts: going to a gallery best free outing you can do
5. Dance: TikTok is doing its best to smear the name of dance but go see your local dance company and get very upset at just how perfect their bodies are
6. Sports: almost all of them are good
7. Theatre: When it’s good, it’s good.
8. Video Games: just don’t fold them into your personality
9. TV: there are maybe only three good dramas.
10. Social media: all been downhill since bulletin boards went away
Apr 8, 2024
Top Recs from @hilltophawk
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This shit means something to me.
Jan 29, 2024
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mmmmm nom nom mmmmmmmmm yummmmm gulp
Jan 22, 2024
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I wrote a little book called 'New York, Baseball, and Mutually Assured Destruction' about mania, alcohol, expectation, New York City, Baseball and.... nukes. I'm doing a giveaway on my instagram, check it out (:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C2sXqCePoKQ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MjM0N2Q2NDBjYg==
Jan 29, 2024